Comparing Dante's Inferno And Hamlet

William Shakespeare 's Hamlet has been considered the greatest tragedy in literature and drama.In Hamlet, William Shakespeare expresses both psychological and physical corruptions in this book making people have deep introspection.As we read about Hamlet, the background and atmosphere which the author Shakespeare create was rot and decay of the whole country.

Fueled by the anger surrounding his banishment from Florence in 1302, Dante Alighieri spitefully wrote the epic poem, the Divine Comedy. The Inferno, the first part of the trilogy of the Divine Comedy, tells the story of Dante the pilgrim and Dante the poet. The two personas deliver Dante’s journey through hell, the Inferno, with added depth. Dante is also guided by Virgil, an ancient Roman poet from 50 B.C. The three personas share different perspectives on the grueling detail of their findings in hell. As his journey is told through poetry, each specific depiction of punishment, aside from eliciting a disgusted emotional response out of the reader, is symbolic towards the overall meaning of Alighieri’s motivation. Duality is a prominent

In The Comedy, Dante the Pilgrim develops a relationship with his damned idol, Virgil, in order to journey through both Inferno and Purgatory. Even though Virgil was a good man while living, he lacked understanding of certain virtues, like pride, which prevented him from being able to reach higher levels in the afterlife. Dante the Poet’s choice to damn Virgil conveys that obeying a higher order is the way to one’s salvation. The developing relationship between Virgil and Dante the Pilgrim throughout the first two canticles brings light to the opposing separation between the two characters because of the devotion Dante has to Christian virtues in comparison to Virgil’s pagan misunderstanding of virtue. While Dante the Pilgrim experiences many

Though Conrad and Dante wrote their pieces centuries apart, Heart of Darkness and Inferno have striking similarities that readers cannot ignore. Both writers have rather bleak and downcast portrayals of humans and their propensity towards evil. In particular, both texts specifically examine the characteristic of greed in human behavior. Conrad and Dante are both quick to highlight the dangers of greed and the impact it has on the individual’s soul. Conrad goes further to describe the damage that is wrought on others when someone is greedy, while Dante depicts in graphic clarity the punishment that the greedy have to endure in the afterlife. In doing so, they portray a critique of greed and

Dante’s Inferno is an epic poem by Durante “Dante” degli Alighieri, written in the 1300s. He wrote a trilogy, known as the Divine Comedy, consisting of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. Dante was inspired by many events and issues happening at that time, such as the war between Guelphs and Ghibellines, the Battle of Montaperti, and Christian religious beliefs. In this paper, I will explore the first book, Inferno, on the topic of Hell and how the sinners had a significant impact on Dante’s journey through Hell. In Circle 5: Styx, Canto VIII, Filippo Argenti, a sinner of Wrathful, helped Dante to symbolize to readers his anger towards Black Guelphs, political enemies of the White Guelphs. In Circle 7: Round Three, Canto XV, Ser Brunetto Latino,

Religion was an extremely important aspect of the Renaissance. During that era, it was near enough impossible to find a text that was not heavily influenced by Christianity and what it represented for different types of people. Perhaps the most famous text that did this was The Divine Comedy, or more specifically, Inferno, written by Dante Aligheri. In this poem, Dante, as a fictionalised version of himself, reflects on morality, death and sin. He wrote the poem in his native tongue to make the poem more accessible to readers, so that they fully understood the message he was attempting to send. I thoroughly believe that in a culture so reliant on religion, sin and sinners are represented reasonably well due to the detailed accounts of various sinners in Hell. In my opinion however in modern times, this is not a brilliant representation of sin as Dante allows his feelings about personal experiences to cloud the judgement of fictional characters in the poem.

Dante’s Inferno details the long journey of Dante and Virgil, throughout the bowels of Hell, or the Inferno. Dante’s Inferno is organized into nine different levels, each distributing a different and awful punishment to every different sin. The main sins include the seven deadly sins, “Wrath, Sloth, Lust, Greed, Pride, Gluttony, Envy”, he also included “Treachery” and “Violence”. The three sins that I believe fit their sins would be “Wrath/Sulleness”, “Greed” and “Gluttony”.

In the Inferno, Dante describes the different levels of hell and the punishment which corresponds to the sin. Dante categorize hell into three major sins consisting of incontinence, violence, and fraudulent. Fraudulent is portrayed as the worse sin in the Inferno while incontinence is seen as a less serious sin. Each category has sinners which have all been punished for their wrong doings in life. The three major sins consist of circles where Dante separates the different sinners. Each circle explains the sin and the punishment the sinners endured in their afterlife. Some circles even included historic figures in Dante’s hell because of their actions in life. The Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale reveal characters who were not portrayed as good people. In the Prologue, the Wife of Bath explains the encounter she had with five of her husbands. Three of the husbands were pleasant while the other two were not. On the other hand, in the tale she tells a story about a Knight who takes the maidenhood of a young girl which almost causes him to lose his life and about women gaining sovereignty. The Wife of Bath fifth husband, King Arthur, the Knight, and the Wife of Bath will be placed in Dante’s hell in the Inferno.

One of the most significant themes, if not the most significant theme within Dante’s Inferno is the perfection of God’s divine justice. Dante expressees divine justice within Inferno in a multitude of ways, with one of the the most prominent examples being the overall structure of Hell and how the punishment for the sinners (perfectly) reflects upon the sin. To the modern reader, Hell likely seems more like an act of cruelty than divine justice, much less a product of God’s love. At first,the torments that the sinners are subjected to seems extreme and grotesque. But, as the poem continues to progress, it becomes quite clear the there is a perfect balance within God’s justice as the degree of each sinner’s punishment perfectly reflects upon the gravity of the sin. Furthermore, the inscription on the gates of Hell explicitly states that Hell exists as a result of divine justice; “ll. “Justice moved my great maker; God eternal / Wrought me: the power and the unsearchably / High wisdom, and the primal love supernal (III.4-6).”

"The Inferno" is the first book in the epic poem called the “Divine Comedy” by the Italian politician Dante Alighieri and it is followed by "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso”. The book "Inferno", which is the Italian translation for Hell, tells the journey of its author through what he believes is Hell, which consists of nine circles of pain and suffering. In his journey, he is guided through the nine circles by the Roman poet Virgil. Each circle in the book represents a different type of sin with a different type of punishment, varying according to the degree of the offense they committed in their life. By the end of his journey through all of the circles, Dante realizes and emphasizes the perfection of God's Justice and the significance of each offense towards God’s unconditional love.

Conscience is inner critical thinking about one’s behavior and acts of rightfulness or wrongfulness- this can affect how one deals with death and the idea of an afterlife by subconsciously guiding one to act a certain way to obtain the ‘promised afterlife’ in the Christian religion. In the time of Shakespeare- the Elizabethan era, the two main religions were Catholic and Protestant, the reader can see influences of religion throughout Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In ‘Hamlet’, the Christian concepts of one’s conscience, death and afterlife are demonstrated through Hamlet and supporting characters. Shakespeare gives these Christian concepts a larger meaning. Religion adds uncertainty and fear to a character’s decision making process. Shakespeare constantly

Throughout the Zeffirelli and Branagh adaptations of Hamlet and the actual text itself, a variety of different views can be

Themes are fundamental and universal ideas that are explored in literary works. The epics of The Inferno by Dante and The Odyssey by Homer are two different stories with themes that that have some similarities while others have distinction. In The Odyssey, the central point is Odysseus struggling to go back home. In Inferno, Dante is the main character who is fighting between good and evil, which translates to be the theme of the story. Dante explores deeply the Christian hell and heaven, which includes the immediate Purgatory. This experience makes him cast his allegiance to good and God. The differences between these two stories are depicted when comparing the epic conventions, epic characteristics, and when comparing the various religious backgrounds of the times in which these two stories were written.

The first incident of this defining power of religion is in Hamlet’s first soliloquy, “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,/ Thaw, and resolve itself into dew!/ Or that the Everlasting had not fixed/ His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!” (Shakespeare, 1.2.129-132). The pain that he is experiencing due to his father’s death and his mother’s dalliances can only be resisted by his faith and his belief in better and worse. Hamlet fears a damnation to Hell, and hopes for an easy passage to heaven, yet in a situation that many find hopeless, it is through his faith in God that Hamlet is able to resist the temptations of death. Throughout the play, Shakespeare emphasizes this intense faith that Hamlet possess and how it is a guiding force in many of his choices. Yet lack of faith can be even more telling.

Pieces of writing are often viewed as a product of their origin time period, even in the modern day it is not uncommon to view our time plane as independent to what preceded as if we were somehow separate from every moment that came before. Instead every aspect of a story is ingrained with the message of millenniums before it, so much so the effect that the present has pales in comparison. This is present throughout Dante’s inferno written by Dante Alighieri as it is not merely a representation of the time period it originated from, rather the present represents the top of an iceberg whose very existence and stature are fully dependent on the times that preceded. This phenomenon of the past is fully present in Dante’s epic hero cycle.